


Omission

by gothamdemon



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Attempt at Humor, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce is sour, Light Angst, M/M, Protective Bruce, Somewhat cuddly and fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-07-28 17:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7650616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothamdemon/pseuds/gothamdemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne is a busy man, too busy to look after a Superman who has lost his memory – and aged backwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stage Zero

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty much started writing this after having seen Batman v Superman, so it will most possibly be somewhat based on it's world. Dipping my feet into this whole DC Universe with this fic. Enjoy!

“I beg you, it will only be a couple of weeks.”

The brooding man sitting in his ergonomic working chair in the caves located below the burned down Wayne manor grounds didn’t look elated to hear the request he had just been issued. He kept staring intently at the monitors in front of himself, knowing that if he turned and looked into the bright blue eyes looking at him like he was the answer to correcting all the wrongdoings in the world, he’d cave in.

“Can’t you just go home?”

“I do not want to bother Ma.” The alien dressed in a way too brightly colored suit to be even close to matching the bleak elegance of the cave’s interior sighed. “I also do not want to hurt her, you know, in case I have to learn to control my powers again from the start.”

_But it’s alright to hurt me?_

Bruce let out a dissatisfied exhale of his own. Where else could he trust the alien if it wasn’t under his watchful eye?

“Alfred?” He spoke to the communications device discreetly clasped to his ear.

“I have already arranged sleeping quarters for Mr. Kent upstairs. The spare bedroom.” Wayne’s trusted butler’s voice carried over through the device. “He didn’t exactly look like he was going anywhere.”

At this Bruce turned around to look at his uninvited quest, his eyebrows rising slightly at the sight of a very beat down and pained looking… man standing there in the middle of his cave. The bastard had the nerve to crack a sheepish smile at him while brushing his dirty dark hair out of his face.

“Took a beating?”

“I believe the radiation caused my cells to work differently, I can’t exactly fly anymore and this thing really hurts.” The Superman complained, holding onto his side where Bruce imagined he had taken quite a hit, considering the slouched posture.

“I have enough things to do without you bringing in your troubles.” Bruce frowned impatiently, the low beeping coming behind him on the computer alarming him to another threat that needed assessing. “What are you still doing here?” He waved towards the stairs, watching the other nod and thank him before limping towards the way upstairs.

Later that night, or maybe it was the early morning, Bruce ventured upstairs. The criminals seemed to be having a night off, plotting their next move in their hideouts, as Bruce let the police handle the rest of what would emerge.

Alfred had left hours ago, saying he had provided some of the clothes he had found from his closets. Narrowing his eyes at the designer shirt the sleeping man was wearing Bruce quietly shut the door and slid away from the quest room, shaking his head at the situation. The light outside had completely disappeared and he was feeling weary.

Anything that happened or would happen could wait until he got a couple of hours of rest.

 

 


	2. Stage One

 

“Alfred?” The gruff sounding man groaned as something persistent and utterly annoying nagged at the corners of his sleep ridden mind. After tossing and turning for hours, he had finally fallen asleep for what now felt like two minutes.

 

The persistent noise wasn’t ceasing and he was with a foggy mind wondering if the noise even belonged to his house to begin with. Snapping his eyes open he all but hopped out of bed, jogging to the source of the disturbance. With great confusion he found out that Superman was gone but the crying noise coming from the room did come from the bed, and as he went closer he realized it came from a tiny source.

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me…”

 

Alfred arrived a couple of hours later to find a distressed looking Wayne pacing around the house with a noisy squirming baby in his arms, bearing a striking resemblance to the quest he had left to the house the night before.

 

“Is that..?” Alfred started, folding his coat over a back of a nearest chair.

 

“Do something about this devil my ears are ringing.” Master Bruce all but thrust the baby into his butler’s arms, as if it was going to eat him alive any moment. There was puke on his shirt, apparently from something he had tried to feed the baby to silence the wailing. “I’m going to have to find a cure for this.”

 

“I recall him saying the only way was to wait it out.” Alfred lifted his eyebrow at the child now clinging to his vest. “Two weeks I believe, until this phase passes.” From the corner of his eyes he swore he saw the earliest signs of Master Wayne having a meltdown.

 

* * *

 

 

Despite his effort Bruce wasn’t able to find anything to speed up the process or to instantly reverse it. After the first week he started to grow more used to the presence in the house, the extra work that followed him anywhere he went. Alfred was only present certain hours of the day. The man kept joking the experience would do him good, but Bruce wasn’t going to even start thinking about any positive sides to the dilemma.

 

It felt bizarre to even think that the biggest threat to anything existing was helplessly crawling on the floor, unable to speak a word to save himself.

 

Having to work and knowing the monster would cry his lungs out when left alone and awake upstairs, tactically refusing to be lulled to sleep – weren’t babies supposed to sleep most of their days? – he had brought him downstairs to the cave.

 

Having been focused on the screen in front of himself he barely registered the sound of something hitting the water. As soon as the thought properly registered in his brain, with the notion that yes, Superman was crawling somewhere along the floors, he shot up from his chair with what felt like an impending heart attack. Just a baby, that kid didn’t have his full powers yet.

 

Diving to the water he returned to the surface with the motionless bundle of limbs held against his chest with one arm, the other used to pull them up from the water. Couching out the water, the child looked miserable and frightened by the experience.

  
Sitting there on the batmobile’s driving ramp, water dripping from his wet clothes and hair, Bruce stared at the small person in his hold. “Alright, fine, I’m not letting you out of my sight now.” He promised, heart beating away at the notion of how close he had been to losing him.

 

* * *

 

 

“Weren’t Kryptonians supposed to be tough?” Bruce muttered, watching the child breathe with difficulty. Whether it was a side effect of falling into the freezing water of the caves – he wasn’t exactly sure if there was any fever present – or if it was just a part of the process itself, he didn’t know.

 

Hearing him, the very young Kent opened his eyes, staring back at him for a moment before tiredness seemed to take him over. After two weeks he resembled a toddler rather than a baby, Bruce not really noticing the rapidness of the growth but Alfred made sure to pick up on any small signs each morning he arrived.

 

Watching him sleep Bruce tried to wrap his little mind around the events and the strangeness of them. He didn’t quite succeed, instead he left with a quiet scoff, making his way back to the cave and some real work of his that had piled up.


	3. Stage Two

 

“Good morning uncle!”

 

Superman was old enough to walk around demanding to know things. He was old enough to get out of the quest room without any challenge and make his way to Bruce’s bedside, where he would stare at him with those unsettling blue eyes until the other woke up.

 

Groaning gruffly at being woken up in the morning – when he had spent the night out patrolling the city – Bruce turned to face away from the persistent child. From the past couple of days he knew to predict he would be getting up from the bed in a matter of minutes or less, forced to give the kid some cereals for breakfast to shut him up.

 

“I made you breakfast!”

 

That notion scared him, startling him awake from the ghosts of sleep he was still trying to cling onto. He whipped his head around to look at the boy – maybe around 7 years now? – smiling excitedly at him. What they found in the kitchenette was a burnt toast with marmalade spread clumsily on it.

 

Alfred walked in on Bruce sitting at the kitchen counter, eating the burnt toast with an expressionless face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I found a letter from… from… him…”

 

“Who?” Bruce asked, frowning at the computer screens. The child seemed to like reading, and thus he had provided him with a pile of books to keep him occupied.

 

“From… Superman?”

 

Confused, Bruce turned around in his chair to look at the boy who had made space for himself next to the table where Alfred normally kept his tools for fixing the gadgets. “You mean you found the letter you wrote yourself?”

 

The boy wrinkled his nose in distaste, shaking his head. “Not me. I don’t know him.”

 

“What did the letter say?” Bruce asked, ignoring the need to tell the kid again about the situation and how he indeed was the alien reliving his childhood.

 

“Told me to be nice to you.” The kid said, shrugging. “Don’t know why.”

 

Bruce felt his eye twitching at that last remark, and he quickly turned back to his monitors.

 

For a while it was quiet and peaceful, but the young Clark Kent seemed to be boy with a million questions stored inside. “What is he like?”

 

“Who? Superman?” Bruce asked, checking the cameras at the corner streets through the network. “Insufferable, dumb and too honest. Really, his biggest flaw is-“ Catching himself mid-sentence he remembered he wasn’t talking to a man who knew how to counter his humor or sarcastic remarks but with an annoying woundable child who took everything to heart. “I-I mean… he… he’s a… hero..?”

 

The kid didn’t look impressed, in fact he snapped his book shut and quietly left the cave, going back upstairs.

 

 

 


	4. Stage Three

 

“Where is he?” Bruce asked, returning from the city of Gotham where he had been required to show up to a meeting. It was hard to focus on the matters others wanted to discuss when his mind was filled with his plans for a body armor upgrade for the suit, to fix a fault in it he had discovered while freefalling through a glass ceiling the previous night.

 

“Outside, sir.”

 

Glancing at Alfred, Bruce walked to the windows overlooking the lake. The young Superman was standing by the lake, glaring at it like it had done something offensive to him.

 

“Perhaps the young master could use-”

 

“I got it.” Bruce loosened his tie and walked outside. He came to a halt next to the kid, looking the way he was looking.

 

“You have an injury.” The kid spoke after a while, sounding like an emotionally sober version of his older self. There was the hint of distaste in his voice, the hesitance whenever someone got themselves beat up while he himself would be standing there without a scratch on his nearly indestructible body.

 

“I take it that the x-ray vision is starting to work.” Bruce muttered out, drawing in a lung full of the fresh air. He didn’t flinch at the pain his moving ribs caused thanks to the severe bruising around them on the left side, too used to similar things happening to his body every now and then when something went not as planned.

 

“I got another letter.” The boy said, kicking at the ground. He put too much force into the simple movement, ending up spraying the dirt for a wide radius. Bruce watched with a quiet unreadable face as some of it landed on his suit, but what was more interesting was the conflicted look on the child’s face. He looked utterly frustrated.

 

“Hey.” Bruce spoke up, crouching down to be able to look at the kid on his level, to seem less of an adult telling him what to do. “You’ll get there, you’ll get all your memories back and it will be okay.”

 

The boy looked at him with the disturbingly blue eyes and seemed to be battling himself against the reassurance internally.

 

“Does it hurt?” The boy looked at him with a frown that looked very troubled. “Does it hurt being a human?”

 

Bruce tilted his head to the side, eyes drifting to look at the water they were standing in front of. “Living is painful whether you’re a human or something else.”

 

“I know I can’t get hurt, I can’t… feel pain like everyone else.” The boy spoke again, the frustration still there. “But things still hurt.” He turned to look at the older man. “Here.” His hand hovered uncertainly over where his heart was beating.

 

“Of course they do.”

 

The young Superman clutched at his shirt over his heart, as if the action would somehow help him grasp the reality of his discomfort.

 

“Even though the heart feels pain… feels… sorrow…” Bruce spoke, straightening up and dusting his clothes. “It is capable of feeling a lot of good things as well, happy things - perfect things to keep the balance.” He looked at the boy who was quietly looking up at him. “From what I have observed, you happen to have a smile on your face for the majority of the time. You have a lot of friends, would you like to hear about them?”

 

The boy’s eyes sparked with interest. “Yeah… I’d like that.”

 

 

 


	5. Stage Four

 

Bruce had been away for a weekend, a business trip he had to attend. It was also a great opportunity to investigate on a lead he had on a corrupt banker in the city of his stay. Upon entering his lakeside house he ran into a beaming young man who was dressed like the Clark Kent he had seen in the pictures hanging on the wall of his mother’s house in the Smallville farm.

 

The thick framed black glasses were looking sturdy on the bridge of the alien’s nose, the flannel and jeans making him look like he had arrived straight from visiting his mother – had he?

 

“Before you ask, there was a parcel this morning from his mother.” Alfred provided, closing the car door the Wayne had forgotten to close in favor of staring at their guest.

  
“So you did not fly there…” Bruce weighed, still a little distracted.

 

“Let me help you with that.” Clark smiled, hovering over to take Bruce’s suitcase from Alfred, flying it swiftly back to the house.

 

“He has been extremely… helpful.” Alfred’s tone changed slightly, alerting the Wayne to the possibility that the trusted family butler might have gotten his fair share of a meddling, well-meaning Kryptonian.

 

“Maybe he is just bored.”

 

“That might actually be the case.” Clark’s voice came again from the house, apparently having been listening in. “I was hoping you would take me to the city with you. During nighttime, I mean.”

 

Bruce lifted his eyebrows at that. “You want to go on patrol with the bat?”

 

The alien rubbed the back of his head, smiling sheepishly. “I kind of miss the action.”

 

“Sirs, if I may.” Alfred spoke up, ushering them indoors before the impending rain would catch up to them.

 

“You think it’s a bad idea.” Bruce spoke the older male, used to the disapproving twitch of the mouth on the butler’s face.

 

“Oh, I am sure he will be able to handle himself. But will you?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

One thing the Batman realized as he swung from rooftop to rooftop followed by a flashy dressed companion was that the younger version of Superman was a lot more reckless. He made errors the older version would never make and evaluated threats in a more sensible manner.

 

“It’s a trap.”

 

“But they are calling for help.”

 

Batman rolled his eyes, letting out a sighing breath as his companion rushed towards the cries he had picked up. He watched as the alien tried to offer his help to a damsel in distress, who in turn attacked him once he was close enough.

 

“That would never happen in Metropolis.” The dejected looking Superman groaned, rubbing the pepper spray from his face once he floated back up to the rooftop. Any normal person would have been in agony but to him it could have very well been just plain water in the spray.

 

Batman leapt onwards, disappearing into the shadows.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I uh, made you some breakfast.”

The disturbance of the late morning gently rasping their knuckles on his bedroom door made Bruce sigh deeply in irritation. Very groggy from the night of crime fighting and the daytime of being a businessman and a flirt and a baby sitter for an alien were starting to weigh on him. He needed to catch some break.

_Just a couple of more weeks…_

Clark didn’t hurry him along like the younger version of him would, but this time chose to sit by the kitchen counter with a steaming hot breakfast, watching the news. He was dressed simply in clothes that were part of the closetful his mother had sent him after he had called her saying he had accidentally used heat vision and set his closet on fire, too busy to go shopping at the moment.

Sometimes Martha Kent not asking too many question came in handy.

Sitting heavily in front of a full plate and a mug of coffee - just the way he liked it – Bruce glanced at the news program acting like background noise. The volume was on a low setting but Clark seemed to have no problem listening to it across the room. “Do you want to go back?” He asked, lifting the rim of the coffee mug to his lips to take his first gulp of the day.

Clark smiled wistfully, shaking his head a little, eyes never leaving the screen. “I do miss it.” He lifted his eyebrows as he seemed to contemplate his own words, as if he only now really thought about it. “It’s my home. My friends are there, my life… my cozy little apartment.”

Bruce remembered the place. Tidy, from the absence of hours spent there and the efficiency only a super speed would give to a cleaning process. Normal on the outside, just like Clark.

“Well, you’ll be going home soon.” Bruce muttered out, focusing on his breakfast. It tasted different from the way Alfred would make it but it was a welcome change.

 

 


	6. Stage Five

 

“Bruce?”

 

Bruce rolled onto his back, squinting against the light at the man standing in the doorway. He blinked rabidly at seeing the familiar colors of red and blue, a costume that seemed to fit just right, unlike the previous days. With a strange kind of finality he realized the arrangement had come to an end. Clark had finally caught up.

 

“I wanted to thank you before I left.” The Superman spoke, looking towards a sound only he appeared to hear in the middle of his own sentence. “Seems like I have been away for too long, the cries for help have only gotten stronger.”

 

Seeing no reason he should get up, Bruce flopped back onto the bed, burying his face against the pillow. There was a rustling sound of fabric and a tentative air current before he felt something warm and fleetingly persistent against his cheek, a squeeze on his shoulder a silent gesture before the gust of air told him the alien was gone.

 

Bruce gasped for air after having stopped from breathing momentarily, his eyes wide as he suddenly felt wide awake.

 

 

* * *

 

 

For the next few weeks Alfred kept dropping newspapers on the coffee table with various headlines featuring the flying savior who seemed to be busier than usual trying to catch up to his usual responsibilities. Frowning at a picture of the person in mid-flight and holding a heavily tilted skyscraper from crashing down over the city, he wondered if… Clark… was doing everything even more vigor than usually out of a sense of guilt. He had been out of business for several weeks and all the catastrophes he had not been able to stop from taking their toll were not his fault.

 

Throwing the paper he had been reading back to the table Bruce stared at it darkly. Maybe he should check up on the alien.

 

The communicator picked the signal somewhere over the Indian sea. “Everything alright?” A brightly loud voice greeted him with a hint of urgency.

 

“In fact, yes.” Bruce leaned back into his chair, gazing out to the lake. “How are you?”

 

“Everything is fine, working as it should. I still have some of the Kryptonian technology to make sure, after all.” Clark’s voice carried over, slightly muffled.

 

“It’s a shame you’re not letting me get my hands on it.” Bruce drawled. “Especially considering how you make it sound.” He wasn’t lying, his brain was tortured each time imagining what kind of secrets and solutions the alien had stored from the remains of the destroyed planet. There were some loud cries and screams heard on the background. “Is this a bad timing?”

 

“No, ah, its fine. Just a landslide. I’m scanning for survivors.”

 

“When have you rested?” Bruce asked, turning the TV on. He searched for the region and it didn’t take too long to spot news on the site. He heard a sigh.

 

“I know.” The Superman said more quietly. “But I also can’t let these people down. I have to stand for something, for hope.”

 

Rolling his eyes Bruce leaned back in his chair, lips pulled into a dissatisfied line. He wondered how hard he could push before the alien would pull the adult card on him – he wasn’t a child anymore and didn’t need to be looked after.

 

“Bruce?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Talk to you later.” Superman ended the call and Bruce watched the news broadcast show the figure of red and blue dive right into the chaos of the natural disaster.

 

Later that night Bruce returned from the streets of Gotham, running his hand through his disheveled hair from the cowl, the narrowly open quest room door alerting him to uninvited company. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find the over performing man of steel sound asleep on the quest room bed.

 


	7. Stage Six

 

Bruce was already sitting in the bat cave with a steaming mug of coffee, working on a case that demanded his attention when the alien decided to make his way downstairs, seeking him. Too used to the odd normalcy of having shared in the past weeks the spaces he regarded more or less his private ones, Bruce simply glanced up from his work.

 

Superman looked almost sheepish, rubbing his palm over his neck, standing there while lightly frowning at the floor. Bruce took a big gulp of his coffee, letting out a sigh once he felt it travel down to warm his insides, waiting for the conversation that was bound to happen.

 

“I wanted to… thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome.” Bruce answered lightly, typing away on the key pad, eyes on the screen and the moving data.

 

“In the past weeks I… somehow bonded closer to you.” Superman continued, finally pulling himself a chair – the same one he had used while being immersed into a book of any kind, preferring the dark and chilly dampness of the cave to the loneliness of upstairs.

 

“That is a probable occurrence.”

 

“Sometimes I wished… wished I could just stay that way.”

 

Bruce’s eyes flickered briefly to catch the Kryptonian looking almost distraught. He wondered fleetingly whether the lack of responsibilities or the chance of living his past ages in a different setting had been the reasons for such feelings.

 

“I liked being close to you.”

 

Bruce drew in a breath. “Is it going to be a problem?”

 

“Yes.” The alien didn’t even hesitate voicing his adamant response.

 

“Then what are we going to do about that?” Bruce asked slowly, eyes tracking every movement he could perceive of his fidgety company.

 

“I don’t know.” Clark sounded honest as he bowed his head, a frown pulling at his forehead. “Maybe it’s just something that will pass.”

 

“Perhaps.” Bruce amended, making no effort of getting up from his chair nor to completely stop working, even if he had halted. “Well, feel free to drop by.” He finally concluded, turning back to his work. A few moments later he got the feeling the presence in the cave had left and the chill bit his bones with a little more fervor.

 

* * *

  

 

It had been a couple of months before Bruce heard of the alien again – if you didn’t count the articles of the Daily Planet that he had been monitoring. Sometimes it felt conflicting to read the articles written by one Clark Kent, but deep down the persona was still a reflection of the alien’s true self. They were similar in ways, just used different methods. Superman had the freedom to do things Clark could never do, yet Clark got a glimpse of a life that Superman would never have.

 

Seeing the alien hovering over one of the taller building of Gotham, Bruce narrowed his eyes, pondering momentarily whether to head to his direction or continue his patrol. Deciding that the shady streets demanded his attention more, he took off knowing that the alien could reach him faster than he could blink if he had something to share.

 

The patrol went without bigger incidents but the fleeting sight of Superman stayed the only sighting he saw that night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce stood overlooking the night view of his city, the dark gloomy sky stretching over the faintly blinking lights trying not to be completely swallowed up by the darkness. He was dressed smartly, the party going around him already winding down, half of the guests either already out of the door or on their way to.

 

He stayed until the venue was empty and the staff had mostly cleared the tables. He could still hear the remnants of the loud chatter and mingling, feel the interested eyes gnawing at his skin.

 

Retiring to the upper levels where he had a whole floor dedicated to his own uses for the nights when he stayed in the city, Bruce didn’t bother switching on the lights, walking casually towards the shower while taking off his clothes, draping his coat over a back of a chair, flinging his tie on the corner of the large bed dominating the bedroom.

 

For a man who liked to live his life to the fullest he fleetingly wondered about the lack of company in his bed in the past months. In a way it didn’t bother him.

 

Before he could realize where his thoughts were leading he stepped to the shower, leaning his palms against the tiled wall.

 

The press of lips against the edge of his shoulder blade next to his spine didn’t startle him apart from the sinking feeling in his stomach that flared up to consume him fully. A part of him knew who it was, a part of him had been expecting it and a part he wasn’t sure he wanted to acknowledge had hoped for it.

 

He realized then what the past months had produced – a new level of trust and dependency.

 

Not sure how to take the realizations his brain was coming to – he had a feeling everything had already been thought over but he only chose to be conscious about such things when it was all swarming over him – he groaned in appreciation.

 

Talking, feelings. It could wait.

Superman was an attentive lover, his tentative skill in the bedroom compensated by the adaptiveness he was keen to. As the night progressed, Bruce felt suffocated by the charisma and wicked charm the other possessed and reveled in every second of the attention. He became undone under the demanding caress, taking as vigorously as he was giving and Clark had no problems with it.

 

 

 


End file.
